The Nisei were the second generation of Japanese to call America home.
This generation was both Japanese and American in attitude and cultural heritage.
Many of the young Nisei worked alongside their parents on family farms, in store
front businesses, and in the timber mills while attending the local public school.

On December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor found the Nisei and their parents
in a difficult situation. Fear of an attack by Japanese naval forces on the West Coast
and resentment against them in California led some people to clamor for people of
Japanese ancestry to be removed. Although Japanese American leaders had
denounced the attack on Pearl Harbor and some civilian and military leaders voiced
their support towards the Japanese Americans, political pressure from California
congressmen, the media and the public to remove the Japanese from the West Coast
was growing stronger.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.
This decree gave the military the authority to exclude people from designated areas to
prevent sabotage and espionage, but President Roosevelt knew that it would be used
to remove people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The army and the Wartime
Civil Control Administration (WCCA), the civilian branch of the Western Defense Command,
began the process of notifying and rounding up all persons of Japanese ancestry on the
West Coast into sixteen assembly centers for processing and placement into ten internment
camps.

Some of the Japanese Americans were able to get sympathetic neighbors and friends to take
care of their homes, farms and businesses. Many of the Japanese Americans lost a lifetime of
hard work as they quickly sold their homes, farms, businesses and possessions. They were
allowed to take one trunk full of clothes and possessions, but certain personal items such as
radios and cameras were forbidden.

The internment camps were located away from West Coast cities in desolate locations like
Minidoka, Idaho and Tule Lake, California. Quickly constructed with crudely built barracks,
barbed wire fences and armed guards the internment camps appeared more like prisoner of
war camps. Over 120,000 people were moved into the camps. Anxious to prove their loyalty to
the United States the Nisei reluctantly accepted internment.

Men of the 442 on the move

Further complicating matters for the interned Japanese Americans occurred in February, 1943,
when teams of Army officers and enlisted men visited the relocation centers to register draft
age men for military service and others for non-military duty such as the Army Nurse Corps
and WACs. Over 33,000 Nisei soldiers served in the American army during the war. Nisei soldiers
were used in the Pacific Theater as interpreters as well as in combat in North Africa, Italy and
France. The principle units in which the Nisei served were the 100th Infantry Battalion, which was
formed in Hawaii, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed from volunteers from the internment
camps, and the secret Nisei Military Intelligence Service whose members served with army and navy
units from the Aleutians to the far reaches of the south Pacific. The Nisei soldiers became famous for
their heroism and the high number of casualties they sustained in combat.

Nisei Military Intelligence Service

Motto:"Go For Broke"
Click on patch to learn
more about the 100/442-RCT

The 442nd/100th sustained 9,486 wounded and over 600 killed suffered, the highest casualty rate of
any American unit during the war. For their heroism, the men of the 442nd/100th won fifty-two
Distinguished Service Crosses, 560 Silver Stars and the Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded
posthumously to Pfc. Sadao Munemori. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team also won seven coveted Presidential
Unit Citations for its performance. The men in the 100th Battalion alone had earned 900 Purple Hearts,
thirty-six Silver Stars, twenty-one Bronze Stars, and three Distinguished Service Crosses.

It is from this background that 14 extraordinary brave young men serving in the "Nisei Military Intelligence Service"
volunteered for a "Dangerous and Hazardous Mission" and became members of the 5307th Composite
Unit Provisional, better known as Merrill's Marauders. Assigned 2 to each of the six combat teams and
2 to the Headquarters, these men continuously performed acts of heroism while fighting against the
Japanese Army in the jungle and mountains of Northern Burma.

Thanks to the "National Japanese American Historical Society".
for providing a large part of the information and graphics for this page.
To learn more about the history of the Japanese Americans,
Click on NJAHS emblem above.

Many Japanese Americans have earned the honor of being buried at Arlington Cemetery,
the 55 that accepted this honor are listed below.